DIIATinERS E CMV/ri f~\ncc 






Page 5, 9th line from top, for Aave read /las. 

Page 8, 7lh line from bottom, for adsurduvi read absurdum. 



RE-UNION OF Tl^E Gi^RFlELD GU^RD OF IjONOR. 



At the time the remains of President Garfield lay in state 
in the Rotunda of the Capitol in September, 1881, they were 
guarded by a number of gentlemen, who during the late war 
had been connected with the* Army, most of them with the 
Army of the Cumberland, of which Army Gen'l Garfield had 
been Chief of Staff. There were about 50 of them, divided 
into 4 " Reliefs," engaged in this duty. 

To perpetuate the memory of this service they formed an 
Organization called " The Garfield Guard of Honor," which 
has held since then Annual Re-Unions on the 19th of Novem- 
ber — Garfield's Birthday. 

The Re-Union of 1885 was at the National Hotel in Wash- 
ington, when 18 sat down at the table ; and several more were 
represented by letters regretting their unavoidable absence. 
The following Officers were elected for the ensuing year : 

President, Gen'l John C. Starkweather. 

Vice President, Gen'l Geo. W. Balloch. 

Secretary, Alex. Scott. 

Treasurer, Major L. P. Williams. 

Historian, M. Gardner. 



^ ., f Fred Mack. 

Council, < r- A Ti T 

' \ Capt. a. p. Lacey. 



The Literary part of the Program at the supper included 
the address of the retiring President, Gen'l R. D. Mussey, 
and responses to the following Toasts : 

" James A. Garfield :" Col. F. A. Seely. 

" Our Vacant Chairs :" Col. ¥^. C. P'ord. 

"The Memories of the War:" Gen'l G. W. Balloch. 

The address of Gen'l Mussey was as follows: 



Comrades : 

For the fourth time the Garfield Guard of Honor 
has met to commemorate its service on those September 
days in 1881 when yonder Capitol became the mausoleum 
toward which the whole world turned. 

Our common service there was a fitting pendant to our 
common service in that struggle which held together the 
Nation in whose Capitol we served. For we, like him whose 
body lay there, had freely left civil life for arms, and as freely 
left arms for civil life again, in obedience to changing needs of 
our common country. As citizens of the Republic we kept 
our vigil around the casket where lay all earthly that remained 
of one who, as our fellow citizen and our fellow soldier, had 
borne a conspicuous part in war and peace, and upon whom 
promotion had fallen — promotion from the visible, the natural 
and the temporal, to the invisible, the spiritual and the eternal. 

Upon that casket, bedded in choicest flowers, whose fra- 
grant beauty yet failed to express the loving, tender homage 
of their givers, palms were strewn in token of the race well 
run, the fight well fought, and the victory surely won. 

Whether by day, we aided through that Rotunda, and past 
that bier, a surging mass where the jewels of the rich rubbed 
the rags of the poor ; where decrepit age guided the faltering 
steps of infancy ; where the delicate and the rough, the million- 
aire and the laborer, the scholar and the unlearned, jostled 
against each other ; where the black and the white, the blue 
and the gray, were equals and brothers ; or whether, by night, 
as the doors were closed and the lights of the dome feebly 
simulated the stars in the greater dome that canopies the 
earth, we stood silent watchers about the dead — whether 
with the multitude about us or alone — the hours there passed 
together were rarely rich in lives not wholly devoid of note- 
worthy experiences. 

To but (ew has it ever been given, as it was given to us, to 
be at the very focus to which the rays of an universal grief and 
a world-wide pity converged ; to see, as we saw, the outward 
demonstrations of a weeping humanity upon the object we 



surrouiuk'ii ; ami to hear, as \vc hcartl, the throbbing; of the 
\\orkr.s heart. 

There have been orders of nobilit)' that hatl their origin in 
.smaller events than these ; and it is j)roper that we, in who.sc 
happy land all are sovereigns, ant! where nobility is not acci- 
dental and hereditary, but, if it exist at all, essential and indi- 
vidual, should, by an annual assembly, keep alive the memories 
of that occasion. 

(^f the half hundred then tos^ether, but three have joined the 
majorit}' since our organization, and there have been fewer 
remo\als from the cit\' since we last met liere than it was then 
feared there would be, so that our reunion to-night is fuller 
than was anticii)ated a year ago. 

Of the absent fuller notice will be given when the toasts are 
reached ; though I ma\' sa)- in passing that our Guard has been 
twice called together during the past year; on the first occa- 
sion to attentl the funeral on the 23d of December last, of our 
Comrade Miller, when, owing to the fact that there was no 
opportunity given for sufficient notification, there were only 
eight present. The second assembly was last June, when 
twenty of us met our Comrade Crittenden on the eve of his 
departure for the Pacific Coast, and bade him good bye and 
God .speed. His heart turns to us to-night, and from his 
Western home he sends us kindly greeting, shaking hands 
with us across the continent ! 

What the year we enter upon has in store for us is merci- 
fully hidden, l^ut, whatever of good or ill may come, let us 
trust that the spirit of devotion to our country which nearly 
a quarter of a century ago enrolled us under the flag that floats 
to-day securer for our ser\'ice, and the comradery which that 
service developed, shall dominate us with increasing potency. 

Thus each reunion will be more precious ; and if the day 
ever comes when all the chairs but one are vacant, the sole 
survivor of the Guard shall fill them with recollections of 
an abiding friendship that no lapse of time can obliterate. 

It is an old fable of the Gothic races that the disembodied 
.spirits of the unburied dead in battle renew at night the con- 



test from which their surviving comrades have rested with a 
fierceness of endeavor unparalleled in the conflicts of the 
living. A better faith leads us to believe that the dead of 
those who fought with us and the dead of those who fought 
against us, now that the gross impediments to true vision are 
removed, see eye to eye, and know that our final victory was 
not a mere personal one, in which man triumphed over man, 
and superior force prevailed, but a veritable victory of ideas to 
which the vanquished by their defeat itself contributed ; and 
that they, even more heartily than their survivors, accept with 
gratitude the result. 

No utterance — nay ! we cannot call it an utterance, for it was 
the penciled memorandum of a speechless man — of all those 
which came from the sufferer on Mt. McGregor, is so pathetic as 
that which expressed his thankfulness that his "time had been 
" extended" because " it has enabled me" — to use his own 
words — " to see for myself the happy harmony which has so 
" suddenly sprung up between those engaged but a few short 
" years ago in deadly conflict. It has been an inestimable 
"blessing to me to hear the kind expressions towards me in 
" person from all parts of our country ; from people of all na- 
" tionalities ; of all religions and of no religion ; of Confed- 
" erate and National troops alike ; of soldiers' organizations ; 
" of mechanical, scientific, religious, and all other societies, 
" embracing every citizen in the land. They have brought 
"joy to my heart, if they have not effected a cure." 

As with tearful eyes we read these words, we cannot but 
wonder if their writer was conscious that they were penned 
four years to a day after Garfield was shot — July the 2d. We 
cannot but ask whether there was recollection of the sympathy 
that then flowed from every human heart upon the sufferers by 
that fatal shot. He must have felt, if he did not consciously 
recall, that unexampled outburst of all that was tender, and 
loving, and pitying in humanity from the nation, not only, but 
the world, whereof he was part, and whereto he contributed. 
For among the group that heard the funeral servic-es of Gar- 
field in the Capitol there was no figure so conspicuous, in the 



eyes of our GuartI at least, as that modest, letirin^^ slirinkin^^ 
man who had held the liij^diest rank our armies could confer, 
had commanded more men than any ^^eneral of modern days, 
had been twice elected to the Presidency, and who, as a private 
American citizen, iiad made a triumphal journey around the 
globe, receiving honors never before given to any one man. 

It is not a mere fancy that links these men's lives together 
in our thoughts to-night. For their lines lay often close to- 
gether in the web and woof of events which Providence have 
woven into the History of our times. Supporting, crossing, 
supplementing each other, by turn, they run through all the 
pattern. Dissimilar in fibre, contrasted in tint, there is yet 
much in common to them. 

Both were born poor, in pretty much all that word implies ; 
yet each was enriched — Garfield from his mother. Grant from 
his father — w^ith a certain force of character and individuality 
that more than compensated for poverty. To each was given 
a physical constitution of marked strength, and a large capacity 
for labor. 

It was from a friend of his father's that Grant went to West 
Point; his mother's influence confirmed Garfield in his deter- 
mination to go to college. Grant was trained to action ; Gar- 
field to speech. The latter became as proverbially fluent as 
the former became proverbially reticent. Grant commanded 
men; Garfield persuaded them. Grant was the actor; Garfield 
the orator. Were it a horse or a regiment the former mastered 
it; were it a dead tongue, or a science, the latter acquired it. 

Fierce, indomitable, insatiable in his thirst to know, Garfield 
could never rest; Grant never lost a night's sleep from brood- 
ing over fate, or in anticipation of possible disaster. Garfield 
was introspective ; and, like all introspective men, somewhat 
distrustful of himself. Grant studied others only; of himself 
he was assured. Equal to all demands theretofore put upon 
him, he feared no future emergency. He was dogmatic; when 
he had settled a question, so far as he was concerned, the dis- 
cussion was ended. Garfield would rehear ; he might have 
erred; this might not have been known to him, and that 



6 

might have been misrepresented. Grant's confidence, once 
gained, it required a cataclysm to unsettle it ; once abused, 
there was no forgiveness. Garfield adhered less firmly to his 
assurance of others ; and when faith was broken with him was 
always ready to welcome back the repentant wrong-doer. 
Garfield was born a scholar; Grant a soldier. Garfield's weak- 
nesses as a soldier sprang from the very qualities that made 
him eminent as a civilian ; Grant's weaknesses as a civilian 
from those that made him eminent as a soldier. Each was 
earnest in his convictions, though Grant followed his without 
remorse or hesitation or consideration for others ; while Gar- 
field shrank from wounding the feelings of those who differed 
with him, and if he drew his sword, toyed with the scabbard 
from a reluctance to give pain that the unthanking attributed 
to a lack of courage. Garfield advised ; Grant commanded. 
Garfield legislated ; Grant executed. The greatest renown of 
each was won in his appropriate field. Grant's civil achieve- 
ments, meritorious and noble though many of them be, would 
have been open to many others ; Garfield's military successes 
alone would not have singled him out for pre-eminence among 
his fellows. But his twenty years in Congress marked him a 
leader there, where a century has produced no more leaders 
than you may count upon your fingers. Grant's Army career 
marked him the leader of a score of leaders in the field. 

To each there came unexampled triumph. The farmer-lad 
and the tow-path boy by different roads advanced to the Presi- 
dency. Grant was the general of the Army of the United 
States when nominated to be the Chief Executive of the nation; 
Garfield was the leader of the House of Representatives and 
a Senator-elect when his name led the balloting at Chicago. 
For no others had such honor on such honors' heads accum- 
ulated. 

Plato names it as one of the fated infelicities that attend 
great success that he who attains it has not himself the use of it; 
that " the general, when he takes a city or a camp, hands over 
" his new acquisition to the statesman, for he does not know 
" how to use them himself" But both to Garfield and to Grant 
was it given to participate actively in the armed recapture of 



a stolon empire, and then to the one to lecjislate for its recon- 
struction, and t(^ l)()th to become its Chief l\Ta;j;istrate by popu- 
hir choice. lM)r, unlike almost every dther soldier tlu- world 
has known, the American soldier of tlie last war tore down 
only to rebuilil. In their allotted tasks after the war, Grant 
and Garfield co-operated; wiseU- in tlu: niiu'n. with errors to 
be sure, which, as incident to huinan iinpt'rfcction of jud<^ment, 
we have loni;- since condoned because of the pure patriotism 
in which they orit;inated. Garfield was earnest and able in 
his support of Grant when Grant was the nominee of his jjarty 
for the Presidency ; and Grant, by his Warren speech, did more 
to elect Garfield than all the other campaiL,ni orators combined. 
For, though Grant was a man of action, whose silence was 
golden when to be silent was the highest duty, he coined pure 
silver into speech when speech was needed. Just as Garfield, 
orator though he was, was capable of sharp antl decisive ac- 
tion — as his antagonists often learned to their sorrow. 

It would seem as if the Army rolls of the last war were not 
to furnish our future Presidents. If such be the case, may we 
not point to the three they have furni.shed — Hayes and Grant, 
and Garfield, at whose bier we saw the other two — as types of 
the American citizen of 1861 ? 

Zealous, yet modest ; innocent, though free ; 
Patient of toil ; serene amidst alarms ; 
Inflexible in faith ; invincible in arms. 

Through this past summer have we not lived over the sum- 
mer of 1881 ? Has not hi.story repeated itself to us? Was 
not Grant as surely assassinated as' Garfield? By what irony 
of fate was it that Garfield \vas stricken through the body and 
Grant througli the spirit ? Did we not know from the outset 
that each blow was fatal? Vet while hope was hopeless and 
mercy would have prayed for immediate surcease of suffering, 
these, our comrades, rose superior to pain and wrested from 
the agonies of a lingering death the precious gift of an heroic 
example for us who remain — antl for that matter, for all the 
world, for all time. 

Garfield, the man of speech, resting his dying eyes on the 



8 

ever-changing yet ever-constant sea whose voice is never 
stilled ; Grant, the man of action, betaking himself as the final 
scene approached, to the mountain whose ribbed fastness and 
grim silence were all his own ; looking the one upon the all- 
embracing ocean of truth whose disciple he had been ; the 
other sublime in his elevation above the surrounding level of 
groveling greed and selfish seeking, filled with a charity which 
embraced all — these two, comrades, henceforth shall have 
audience of the ages ! 

As Ruskin says : " Men cannot benefit those that are with 
" them as they can benefit those that come after them ; and of 
" all pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there 
" is none from which it reaches as far as from the grave." 

From the pulpits of their graves what sermons shall be 
spoken of patriotism, of courage, of patience, of endurance, 
of obedience, of leadership, of struggle, of achievement, of 
fraternity, of — in one word — the summary of all that is noble 
in aspiration and great in achievement — of American citizen- 
ship ! 

Indeed, at times it seems best that their graves should not 
be here in Washington ; that the one should be beside that 
lake which fascinated the boy, a land mark for the mariner of 
the interior, and a monument and guide for the emigrant as 
he follows the sun to its Western setting, proclaiming with 
the captivating eloquence of example, the possibilities of our 
national life ; while the other in that congeries of foreign cities 
called New York, like a beacon warns from off the shoals that 
surround the money maker ; pointing the moral, that ,the 
only real wealth is in character ; and that there is no higher 
or more glorious fame than to have served our fellow man. 

" Pulchrum est bene facere rei publicae ; etiam bene dicere 
" haud adsurdum est ; vel pace vel bello clarum fieri licet." 

These men, each of them, both by act and by speech, served 
the Republic ; and each was illustrious in peace and in war. 

" Taps" over their bodies if you will ; " taps" at their graves 
if you will, for the death they have conquered ; but for them, 
" the Reveille ;" for upon them has risen the sun of an endless 
day! 






